Parties Avoid Campaign Finance Laws;
Bruno's Son Gets $90K to Lobby Dad

By Henry J. Stern
February 17, 2005

Just when you thought ethical standards in New York State politics had hit rock bottom, two fresh items appeared in today's newspapers indicating that new lows are on the way.  We are aware that these stories are depressing, and ask your mercy on the messenger.
 
In an A1, col. 1 story in the Times, which jumps to B4, Michael Cooper reports from Albany that unlimited corporate donations are flooding into housekeeping committees created by political parties.  Here is his lead:

"The federal government may have cracked down on the use of soft money by national political parties, but the tradition is alive and well in New York State.  Local parties can still accept unlimited corporate donations to their so-called housekeeping committees, which have few restrictions on how they can spend their money.

"The increasing use of party housekeeping committees was highlighted this year by the disclosure that the state Republican Party's housekeeping committee pays the salary of a full-time assistant for the state's first lady, Libby Pataki."

The story continues, explaining how the device is used to skirt the state's already weak campaign finance laws.  For example, bond underwriters, forbidden from making large gifts to political campaigns, give substantial sums to the so-called housekeeping committees.
 
An alert reader, Jerry Skurnik, e-mailed us this afternoon to say that it seemed perfectly appropriate for a housekeeping committee to pay for Mrs. Pataki's housekeeper.
 
As if that were not enough, the Post leads page 2 with a story by Tom Topousis, headlined "Stadium foes paid lobby teams $14M."  To spell $14M out, it is fourteen million dollars.  Some of the money went for massive media campaigns, which is their First Amendment right.  Advertising expenses tend to offset each other, more or less, just as rival campaigns for toothpaste or other consumer products end up without much impact on market share.
 
What is most striking in the story is the list of lobbyists employed by the Jets and Cablevision, rival contenders on the West Side Stadium issue.  The surprise is who the lobbyists are and how much they have already been paid.
 
Cablevision (the Dolan family) seems to have the edge in influence.  They hired former Senator Alfonse D'Amato at $35K, a pittance for the man who plucked George Pataki from the back benches of the State Senate and made him governor; Patricia Lynch, who was Sheldon Silver's chief of staff for many years, $102K; Randy Mastro, Mayor Giuliani's former deputy, $26K; Arthur Finkelstein, political consultant for Gov. Pataki, $352K; and Kenneth Bruno, son of Senate Majority Leader Joseph L. Bruno, $90K.
 
The Jets, owned by Woody Johnson — that is Robert Wood Johnson IV — whose family business is legal drugs, have a strong but less stellar cast of retainers:  Kieran Mahoney and Michael McKeon, political advisor and former chief spokesman to Gov. Pataki, $150K; Bill Lynch, who was David Dinkins' deputy mayor for politics, $25K; Jeff Buley, counsel for the New York State Republican Party, $23K; and Ken Sunshine, who used to speak for Mayor Dinkins and worked for Speaker Silver, $30K. 
 
This list will undoubtedly be added to as lobbying continues.  One might argue that the two sides cancel each other out, and the decision can therefore be made on the merits.  But there's not much chance of attaining impartiality through equivalent largesse.  To us, the idea of paying $90K to Kenneth Bruno, the Senate leader's son, to lobby his father is a complete outrage.  But is it worse than buying influence through those lobbyists whose relationship to the objects of their lobbying is not biological, but economic? 
 
That is a hard call, but the entire Albany situation, where substantial sums are paid for political influence by people with presumed personal ties to public officials, is shameful.  The mild reform that has been adopted, requiring these expenditures to be reported, which leads to their publication, at least alerts us to the dimensions of the disgrace.  Where are the lawyers who can advise us how to criminalize these excesses?
 
Considering Attorney General Eliot Spitzer's great energy and diligence in pursuing wrongdoers in the private sector, imagine what he could do if he unleashed his staff on the Albany gang?  We suspect that he knows more about these situations than we do, and we invite him to take another look at the mess.  He is probably waiting to do this until he is elected governor, but perhaps he could provide us with a sample of his fateful vengeance as an aperitif.
 
Two stories like this in are enough for one day, especially when the news is as unpalatable as the events described above.  Many voters believe that the upper level of New York State government is a giant slop sink, with officials of both political parties more influenced by personal considerations than by the public interest.  In a democracy, the remedy is the ballot box, but the combination of gerrymandering and highly technical election laws provide security for legislators with only the grim reaper and the district attorney as potential obstacles to their perpetuation and their perpetration, respectively.

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